■ International
Chen keen to attend summit
The government said yesterday it will keep pushing for President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to attend this year's APEC leaders' summit despite host South Korea's reported refusal -- a common problem for Taiwan, whose leaders are often barred from international events due to pressure from rival China. Chen on Friday said he wants to attend the APEC summit in Pusan, South Korea, this November and hopes to meet Chinese leader Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) on the sidelines. But South Korea's Yonhap news agency yesterday quoted an unidentified South Korean official as saying Seoul has rejected Chen's request to attend the Nov. 18-19 APEC summit. Taiwan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) yesterday said the nation will keep pushing for Chen to attend APEC summits in the future. "As an APEC member, we have the same rights as all other members," Lu said. Taiwan joined APEC, with Beijing's consent, in 1991. But Taiwan usually sends prominent academics or economic officials to represent it at APEC summits, because Beijing still insists that host countries not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state by letting its leaders attend.
■ Travel
Beijing makes travel easy
China has simplified exit and entry rules for Taiwanese residents as part of a campaign to foster closer economic ties with the nation, state television said yesterday. Effective today, Taiwanese residents can be granted multiple entry and exit permits, valid for one to five years, and forego obtaining separate residence permits, China Central Television cited the Public Security Ministry as saying. Nearly 34 million Taiwanese people visited China from 1987 to December of last year, largely to visit relatives, see the country or work, the report said.
■ Wildlife
Beached sharks bite the dust
Two sharks that became trapped on a beach in Suao during a typhoon died after attempts to return them to the sea failed, police said yesterday. The sharks were found Saturday on a beach suffering from unspecified injuries, city police said in a statement. Rescuers from a local animal reserve tried to push them back into the sea, but strong waves washed the sharks back to the shore, the statement said. The rescuers then loaded the flailing fish onto trucks and took them to the Ilan Animal Reserve for treatment, but the sharks died shortly after arriving there, an official at the reserve said. The official said Typhoon Haitang, which battered the nation's eastern coast last week, likely washed the sharks into unfamiliar waters.
■ Religion
200 goddess statues on show
More than 200 statues of Kuan Yin Bodhisattva, the goddess of compassion, are being displayed at an exhibition that opened yesterday in Taya (大雅) Township, Taichung County, to coincide with the anniversary of the bodhisattva's attainment of nirvana. The exhibition, at the Taya International Flower Market, will last until Aug. 14. Many of the statues have been donated temporarily to the exhibition by collectors and Buddhist followers. The statues are made from a variety of materials, including brass, jade, wood and porcelain. Some were fashioned more than 100 years ago. Hsu Teng-feng (徐登豐), manager of the Taya International Flower Market, said that Kuan Yin, also known as Kuan Shih Yin, is one of the three sacred rulers of the Western Pureland in Buddhist teachings.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching